Tonight we arrived in the Greek town of Alexandroupolis, which is located in northeast Aegean Sea. In the last 3 days we have collected 10 samples from 5 sites; it has been a long couple days! In the last blog I talked about the 2 sample sites in the Black Sea, since then we have collected samples on the north entrance of the Bosphorus (in the Black Sea), the South entrance of the Bosphorus (in the Sea of Marmara) and in the Dardanelles.

This transect is very important because you have huge amounts of water moving back and forth from the Black Sea and Aegean Sea. There are also big salinity gradients, not only in the surface waters from each body of water, but also in the water column due to the movement of water from each area. The salinity of the Sea of Marmara is slightly greater than that of the Black Sea but only about two-thirds that of most oceans. However, the water is much more saline as you go down the water column in the Sea of Marmara; it is actually similar to that of the Mediterranean Sea. This high-density saline water, like that of the Black Sea itself, does not migrate to the surface.